the second possibility is, you know, something goes wrong for romney, he actually loses this debate. obviously that would be terrible for him now the third possibility, to be honest, probably the most likely one is nothing happens it is pace basically a draw, maybe 90 minutes of dull and boring television if that happens, the status quo in this vase affirmed. the status quo in this race has been a steady, stub burn three or four-point lead for barack obama and at that point, romney would be running out of big-moment opportunities to turn this thing around. that's what i'm looking for. here with us now in denver, we have howard fineman, the "huffington post" media group. said he is the buffalo bob of our show. >> now i'm don meredith because don meredith always used to say on monday night football, when the game was nearly over, woe start singing. ♪ the party's over but not there yet. >> bring you back to sing at some point, heward. before we do that, we have another task and i thought howard would be the perfect guy to lead this off. basically, we want to look ahead to this debate